In a matter of seconds, a baby’s shrill cries can stop – sometimes forever.

A simulation doll, used in local education programs, illustrates the chilling silence that can follow a bout of shaking at the hands of a fatigued, frustrated caregiver.

Permanent damage or death can follow fewer than 20 seconds of shaking, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, which estimates 600-1,400 cases per year in the U.S.

In the wake of Greater Cincinnati’s latest alleged shaken-baby death in Hamilton last week, authorities say it’s important to continue trying to get the anti-shaking message across.

The Hamilton baby’s father, Vincent Blanda, 37, is charged with murder and faces a court hearing today in the death of his 5-month-old daughter, Brooklynn.

Simulation dolls are a tool that Trihealth’s ThinkFirst injury prevention program and similar offices are using to emphasize the “never shake a baby” concept that has been around for about a decade.

People who see dolls shaken in a demonstration “are shocked at what could really happen,” said Krista Jones, a director of ThinkFirst, based at Bethesda North Hospital’s Trauma Services.

The ThinkFirst For Your Baby program targets uninsured pregnant teens and other low-income girls and women. The program provides six lessons that aim to prevent injuries of infants through prenatal education and a post-partum follow-up.

The dolls help dramatically illustrate what parts of the brain are damaged when a child is shaken, Jones said. Participants are taught how to cope with a crying infant: rock the baby, change its diaper, feed the child or offer a pacifier, Jones said.

The number of infants diagnosed as being abusively shaken have remained relatively constant since Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center started keeping track in 2001. Since then, the hospital has seen an average of 19 shaken babies per year. On average, three of those infants died.

The year-to-year variation isn’t large enough to be able to tell whether prevention efforts are having an effect, said Dr. Kathi Makoroff, of the Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Children’s hospital. She also said some cases of shaking are mistakenly attributed to other causes if the right tests aren’t done – so more children are shaken in our region than the numbers indicate.

Makoroff wishes people would heed this advice: “If a baby is crying and you’re frustrated, don’t pick that baby up.”

Dr. Lori Shutter, director of neurocritical care at the Neuroscience Institute at the Mayfield Clinic in Cincinnati, said people may be unaware of the potential for severe consequences if they lose their cool and shake an infant out of fatigue or frustration when they cannot figure out why a baby is crying.

Blanda told an emergency dispatcher that he was tired and did not intend to hurt his daughter, but she died at Children’s Hospital Medical Center on March 25, a day after he called to report the baby had gone limp after he shook her.

“People in general do not realize how easy it is to injure the brain,” Shutter said. The brain is the consistency of “really firm Jell-O or custard,” she said. During shaking, the brain “starts moving within the skull in an uncontrolled fashion,” causing bruise like injuries as it bangs around inside the skull.

The bruised areas swell and, if the swellling cannot be controlled, the brain can become so compressed that “the deep parts of the brain that tell you to wake up again or to breathe can be destroyed,” Shutter said. (…)

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, OH
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